Pierre Stefanos | Bedfellows / 2010

ken dolls

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pierre Stefanos (screenwriter and director) Bedfellows / 2010 [15 minutes]

 

Told as a fairy tale, Pierre Stefanos’ Bedfellows is essentially yet another fantasy of the heterosexual American Dream played out with gay figures, like a closeted child playing with toy men trying to plan out how he might exist in the future.

     Narrated by Tim Gualtieri, it tells the story of Bobby (Paul Caiola), whose heart was broken by a cheating boyfriend. Bobby only now, after eight long months, has returned to a gay bar to pick someone up, thoroughly depressed for even having to reenter the gay bar world. But from across a crowded room, a handsome stranger, Jonathan (Bret Shuford) buys him a drink.

      The two go home, have great sex, and stay the night together, while Bobby—obviously desiring a similar life to his own parents but obviously even better—dares to dream of his mock-heterosexual future. The two fall in love, get married, adopt a black son and attempt to have a surrogate child. The only tragedy seems to come to the female surrogate who loses the baby. But don’t worry, they soon after adopt as Asian girl. They obviously have high paying jobs living in a mansion that seems to be located in some posh neighborhood in Long Island, and their children grow up, the boy Damian heading off to college while the girl Li having a baby, although it’s Bobbby who cries over the loss of “their” baby. Even the roles of gender seem not to be altered. No hidden feminist message here. Women are made to have babies. 

    Sure, the boys argue, but they bring each other flowers and make up. Their love is strong and they end the film by sitting on the terrace sipping cocktails, hands around each other’s waits.

      Waking up, Bobby finds his cuddling friend gone. It’s clear, so the narrator tells us, that his meeting with Jonathan was just a one-night stand. But when he enters the kitchen, there is Jonanthan who has made Bobby and a himself a full breakfast, scrambled eggs, French toast, bacon, and orange juice. This could be the start of something big, so the narrative hints.

 

     The only original aspect of this heteronormative fantasy is that it was made in 2010, five years out from same-sex marriage becoming legal in the US.

       Of course, a great many gay men want to live out just such a fantasy, and in some senses, I, who have been now married nearly 55 years, have lived in such a world, sans the perfectly diverse little family Bobby and Jonathan have created. But today many a gay couple have, in fact, made their lives over in the very image this tale dreams of.

       I have to ask, however, why does this appear on a disk called “Best Gay Shorts?” What is gay about Bobby’s life and why does this little fantasy represent one of the best short films of the gay world? Except for the fact, as the narrator mentions in the very first line of this film, that the lovers both have penises, what does their being “gay” mean in this fairy tale? What does their being two men in love really matter? Something like this dream must cross the minds of millions of straight couples every year.

       Frankly, the difficulties my husband and I have had as being two males living together is far more interesting that Bobby’s imagined reality. The feeling of not being part of the normative straight world has made me a more complex figure than the toy men Bobby and Jonathan appear to be, like two Ken dolls with all the benefits of Barbie and her friends. Seeing this film in 2024, I see nothing original in this picture.

 

Los Angeles, February 20, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).